Having gone to see Red Doors, a film focused on a Chinese-American family, I wondered how frequently people find themselves in crisis only to leave one's family in search of meaning. In the film, a father whose retirement comes swiftly early in the film, decides one day to leave his family, comprised of a wife, three daughters, one who remains living at home. When the eldest daughter finds her father, she finds him at a Buddhist monastery. Although his eldest daugher wishes for him to return home, he claims it is best for him to remain there, knowing that what he returns to will be deadening. Is Chekhov correct in suggesting that we only gain meaning in work? If so, what does that mean for people who are forced to retire? Eventually, the father must make a decision while the rest of his family have their own lives to live. What remained with me after the film was how little his absence seemed to mean for them. While his wife expressed a quiet grief, the rest of the family continued along, seemingly unaffected. Do the writers of the film want to say that Chinese-American fathers risk irrelevance? How often have we viewed programming in which the paternal figure has been reduced to ridicule or blithely dismissed? Why is it that men of a certain age become obsolete?